Housecat
Kittens, housecats, and large cats (all ) are carnivorous domestic animals and can be tamed with tripe, food rations, fortune cookies, or edible corpses if they are fresh. Eating the corpse of a domestic cat is alike to cannibalism unless you are an orc or a caveman. This will give you the aggravate monster intrinsic, but will not decrease your luck: "You feel that eating the kitten was a bad idea." While you should not sacrifice a former pet that died tame, offering a cat corpse is otherwise safe. The famous "Schrödinger's Cat" can sometimes be found in a quantum mechanic's large box - either dead or alive. Just as in quantum physics, its state is determined only the moment you observe it. Beware! At lower levels, hostile (not your pet) kittens, and other felines are extremely dangerous. They move much faster than you do, and thus may attack you multiple times per turn. Deaths at the hands of cats account for about .6 percent of deaths on nethack.alt.org. Types of cat Kitten The kitten is one of three possible starting pets, the others being dogs and ponies (for Knights). They are capable of growing up into housecats after they kill enough monsters. The kitten and its grown up forms are sometimes better fighters than newly started characters, and can be used to fight for you in the early stages of the game. Nevertheless, they may be more vulnerable than you against passive attacks, such as acidic monsters or floating eyes. They also are extremely vulnerable to falling rock traps and rolling boulder traps and many die to this within the first hundred turns of a game. Housecat The housecat is a grown-up kitten and is therefore usually encountered as a player's pet. They are capable of growing up into large cats. As with their brethren, they are excellent fighters to have as companions to early game characters, but remain vulnerable to passive attacks. Large cat The large cat is the final form of a grown-up housecat, and is therefore usually encountered as a player's pet (especially with early game characters, as they are easy to obtain by training a starting kitten). As with their brethren, they are excellent fighters to have as companions to early game characters, but remain vulnerable to passive attacks. Eventually, it may be worthwhile to attempt to upgrade your large cat to another monster using a polymorph trap, especially if you have more than one pet. Pet cats Cats are one of the most common pets. Many roles begin the game with one. Taming wild cats is usually easy, because all sizes of cat are considered domestic animals. Throwing a meaty treat, a safe fresh meat-based corpse, or processed human food at a hostile or peaceful cat will tame it. Throwing any other comestible at a cat will at least render it peaceful, with the exception of cream pies and eggs (which will break on impact). All meaty treats (tripe rations or meatballs), can be used to train your cat to fetch. You can #chat with your cat to get an idea of how it is feeling: * it will yowl if it is caught in a trap, confused, fleeing, or tameness is getting low. * if the cat is leashed, and there is a trap next to it, it will whimper without you #chatting to it. This works even if the trap is undetected. * if it will be hungry soon (1000 turns or less), it will mew. * if it is hungry, it will meow. * the rest of the time it will purr. Encyclopedia entry }} Category:Monsters